Special Issue of West Coast Line:Representations of Murdered and Missing Women.

This special issue of West Coast Line, to be published in 2007, willgather together work related to representations of murdered and missingwomen. While the focus of the issue is on representations of murderedand missing women of Vancouver and British Columbia, WCL also invitesworks which have a national or international context. (If you havequestions, please query the guest editors for a response specific towhat you propose). For more details, see below.

Submissions sought:Though the issue will be composed mostly of essays and non-fiction, workin all genres is invited, including fiction, poetry, drama, art andphotos (B&W reproductions), interviews (please query first), cross-genreworks, and artist statements focused on relevant work. This issue willbe of interest to academics, teachers, activists, artists, and thebroader community, and work is sought from each of these groups.

Please include full contact information and send a self-addressedstamped envelope if you'd like your work returned.

Submission details:Margin-to-margin works (i.e. prose, up to about 3000 words)Poems (up to about 5 pages).Photography, artworks, etc. (up to five or so B&W pieces. Copies only,please. Please query before sending electronic copies to<westline_at_telus.net> ).Contributors will be paid regular WCL rates. See <www.westcoastline.ca>for details.

Some background:Representations of murdered and missing women have become increasinglycommon in Canadian film, art, plays, drama, fiction, poetry and themedia. Images and narratives involving the dead and disappeared, as theymove from a private to the public sphere, are inflected by largercultural processes.

When a work is envisioned (in part or whole) as a public act ofremembrance, whether in a civic setting or artist-run gallery, as partof a memorial march or on the page, it likely involves a series ofnegotiations. For this reason, WCL is gathering essays on what it meansto produce (and to respond to) works that represent (or otherwiseindicate) murdered and missing women. What ethical issues areinvolved in creating or critically engaging with a memorial, forinstance? How is public memory related to a work of art or a text? Whattensions exist between humanization and aestheticization, representationand exploitation? What other issues arise when that which is private ismade public? When individual identities enter a larger discourse throughtrauma? What ethical questions arise around representations andcritiques that take place in the immediate aftermath of such asignificant trauma and loss? What tactics are taken in response toimages/identities that are 'fixed' by the mainstream media? Whatpotential readings (misreadings) exist for a photo (or the revisioningof such photos; for example, the sketches and paintings done by variousartists with the explicit purpose of presenting softer, more "humanized"versions of subjects)? Etc.

Representations and narratives of murdered and missing women areunquestionably political. How are broader social issues, such as raceand gender and poverty and class, implicated in depictions of missingand murdered women? How are missing and murdered women represented inlaw, policy, activism? How are representations of missing womenorganized verbally? Visually? Which urban spaces do such images exist inor on? To what uses are the images put? What tropes 'haunt' these uses?Are there historical precursors? Etc.

This issue of WCL is open to work from various disciplinary backgrounds,as well as interdisciplinary work. For instance, what might ananthropological, a linguistic, or an art history approach to thequestions at hand involve? An approach that combines or moves across andthrough these disciplinary fields, or others? Most of all, this issue ofWCL is open to thoughtful, engaged responses.

If you have questions, please contact the guest editors at<westline_at_telus.net>.

About the guest editors:Amber Dean is currently working on her PhD in English at the Universityof Alberta, although she continues to be most at home in Vancouver whereshe still teaches women's studies courses at Capilano College in thesummertime. Her work has been published in Canadian Woman Studies,Fireweed, & Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, among others,and she was guest editor of a special edition of Kinesis on women &Canadian prisons. Part of her dissertation work considersrepresentations of murdered and missing women.

Anne Stone's first novel, jacks: a gothic gospel (DC 1998), isexperimental, conveying aspects of the story through the book's design.The second, Hush (Insomniac, 1999), explores violence, complicity andsites of resistance. A third novel, in the works, is about Streetsvillegirls, about sisters, one of whom is gone. She currently teaches twocourses at Capilano College which look at representations of murderedand missing women and children in contemporary texts, films, and photos,and the uses to which those representations are put.